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The heart at Christmas

One year ago Christmas Eve my community suffered a horrible act of violence which resulted in two first responders’ deaths and more injured. This community will never be the same, but will be stronger.

Just over a week ago a sister church lost one of their pastors from complications during childbirth. That community and young family will never be the same, but will hopefully grow stronger through the terrible heartache.
Then late last night a dear friend from my teen years in youth group at church lost her mother after a long bout with hospital stays, so soon after my friend’s husband also hurt my friend so badly. I pray she will grow stronger after all this pain and loss she is feeling, but know it will take a long time.

Through all of this I can cling to the hope in a child’s birth so long ago. A birthday we celebrate every year after a bishop so long ago declared we could not let time go by without celebrating and recognizing this child who changed the world. The birth day of a child who was born in a stable, raised by parents just like us. A child who grew to change hearts, to make those who are weak strong.

I trust in Jesus Christ and I celebrate His birth every year. I know others who celebrate the day of Christmas, but I want deep in my heart, nothing more than to celebrate Jesus’ birth on this Christmas day. It is for this reason my heart wants to sing Merry Christmas to you and yours!

I pray this year that those who are hurting, who have fresh wounds they feel will not heal, that they will grow stronger through Him, and by Him because He was born. It will take time and it may not be strength in ways we can see, but strength to carry on minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, until one day they can celebrate, with some sadness, but also with great joy.

I celebrate Jesus’ birth today and pray for these and all who are hurting in their hearts. So my Merry Christmas comes with the hope that all will find the Merry in the reason for celebrating today.

Merry Christmas!

D is for DNA experiment

6 year old Cutie Pie has had his eye on this DNA experiment from our 50 Science Things to make and do book ever since we first got it. Unfortunately, whenever we sat down to do an experiment in the past this was just never picked! So the Friday Cutie Pie and Sweet Pea had off for Superintendents conference I made sure to pull this out. Little did I know how perfectly it would fit into our weekend! (But, if you read We are Unique then you already do!)


This Seeing DNA experiment is rather simple, but very interesting and can easily be combined with a lesson on how we are all unique, Psalm 139 or the letter D! Check out We Are Unique to see how!

(This experiment was taken from 50 Science Things to Make and Do, by Usborne Activities. We really love the experiments in this book!)

Materials:
an adult
bowl
onion
sharp knife
dishwashing liquid
teaspoon
salt
water
rubbing alcohol
sieve
glass jar
timer

First, make sure an adult is helping you. Then either you or the adult can finely chop up your onion with a sharp knife and place the pieces in a bowl.

Pour in just enough dishwashing liquid to coat the onion pieces and stir.

Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and carefully pour in two tablespoons of water trying not to make any foamy bubbles. Stir again, trying not to make any bubbles. Let this mixture sit still for 10 minutes.

Stir the mixture gently again, then place it in a sieve over a bowl. Pour the liquid that escaped into a glass jar, removing any foam with a spoon.

Carefully trickle rubbing alcohol into the jar, letting it run down the side of the jar so no more bubbles are made. This will make a second layer of liquid in the jar. Do not stir!

Set your timer for 20 minutes this time. At the end of 20 minutes or so you should see a white, stringy substance in the top layer. This is the onion’s DNA!

What’s going on? DNA does not break down in the dishwashing liquid and salt like the rest of the onion does. DNA doesn’t dissolve in alcohol, so it appears as the solid white strings!

This post contains an affiliate link for an Usborne book. I may or may not be compensated for your following or purchasing an item through the link. I am linking to this item because my family and I like it, not because I am being compensated in any way.

We are Unique

One recent Sunday one of the teens in our church handed me pumpkins for the boys. Attached to one was a note “This pumpkin made me smile because it is unique. Unique means something is special, God made each of us special and loves us very much!” I just couldn’t believe what I read!

See, on that Friday Cutie Pie was home from school, so I decided to pull out an experiment that he has repeatedly requested. We folllowed the steps to see DNA of an onion. (I’ll post more about the experiment in a day or so.) During a pause in the experiment (we had to set a timer for 10 minutes) we talked about how everyone has DNA and how it helps us to all be unique in many, many ways.

A while ago I came across Dare 2 Share and remembered reading a devotional there about Psalm 139. I read Psalm 139 aloud to the boys, stressing the words fearfully and wonderfully made. I shared that it is believed fearfully means “with great reverence and heart-felt interest and respect” and wonderfully means “unique, set apart, uniquely marvelous” and that these words described us! (I tried my best to explain these ideas in their words. These definitions were taken from Time to Read Your Bible by John Fullard as how they were meant in the original Hebrew.) They really liked that idea and when they could see the onion’s DNA at the end of the experiment they seemed to ‘get’ that even though it’s a sort of nondescript sort of thing, that it is special, just like our DNA is, which means we are unique!

Back to that Sunday, when I got into the car with the pumpkins and read the note attached to the pumpkin the boys thought it was cool. When I reminded them of the verse from the Friday before they thought it was really cool!

That night we read the book On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman. And we watched the video Spoon, adapted from a book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. They just seemed to fit into the whole weekend just perfectly!

(This might be a good lesson for teaching the letter U? Or maybe the letter F and you can check out fingerprints and talk about how each is unique!)

This post contains affiliate links. I only link to these items as my children and I very much liked these items. I may or may not receive benefits from your checking out these links.

Encourage Writing – Prayer Box

Do you pray with your child and record their requests?

Six year old Cutie Pie’s Sunday School teacher gave him a box, originally for writing down prayer requests. At night when we pray he now draws his prayer requests rather than writing them since drawing is something he loves to do. A prayer box is so simple an idea, one I had thought of for me, but not for my kiddos before. (I’m not sharing a pic because this is something personal to Cutie Pie and out of respect for him I have chosen not to share it.)

Making a prayer box is a very simple (family) project if you’d like to make one with your kids (any age) and help them keep track of their prayer requests and answers to prayer!

What you’ll need:

  • index cards
  • box (small shoebox is great if you don’t have an index card box)
  • pencils or crayons
  • stickers or other materials to decorate the box

Simply have your child decorate the box in whatever form they wish. Insert the index cards, possibly making dividers by month if you want to get detailed and leave near the place you usually pray! (coordination, fine motor)

It’s pretty simple to use, and can be something very personal for your child, or something you do together. It can be a great encouragement for your child to write if praying for others is their gift. Your and/or your child can use it in a way that fits them best, drawing requests, writing them, daily, nightly, recording their thoughts about Bible Stories they’re learning, whatever. The project is completely personalize-able!

When Cutie Pie draws a request we date it. At first this was just to be able to keep some order to the requests, but it turns out this has allowed us to see improvement in his drawing skills over a period of time.

We can also review his prayer requests with him periodically to see if any have been answered, although we haven’t done this with him yet.

We are involving him in nightly prayers, even though he doesn’t always say them. He’s learning to pray for others and to be thankful for what he has. Whether you are a praying family or not thinking of others and being thankful are two great personality characteristics!

Mama’s week in review – letter A

Here we go Again! Cutie Pie wanted to keep going with the alphabet and add numbers in the mix. We started over with Hubbard’s Cupboard’s 3’s curriculum. This time I’m trying to get Cutie Pie to be more ‘hands-on’, trying his hand at writing and drawing more, which he didn’t like to do the first time through. It’s been a challenge, however, he’s really been into counting this week, so that makes up for it! We’re also going a little more quickly than in their outline this time.

Bible Story – The Creation Story, where else to start?! Cutie Pie remembered much more of this than I thought he would! He seemed very excited to read the story each morning and was very good at counting the days as we read. Again, we didn’t do everything in the Hubbard’s Cupboard weekly outline, but did make use of some of the crafts as a basis for discussion starting. He also approached the topic of God creating Dinosaurs several times. I’m going to have to read up on this one!

Math – Cutie Pie was very into counting this week. He counted items on the table, the number of toy trains on the track, cars in their pockets on the door, the number of windows on the first floor, and the list goes on. Sometimes, when he wouldn’t eat, he’d more willingly eat if we counted bites on our fingers.

Cutie Pie was also interested in learning to write his numbers, so we used the number rhymes from Hubbard’s Cupboard and tried writing one and two. Cutie Pie needed a lot of encouragement, as he kept saying he ‘isn’t good at writing’. (fine motor, self-esteem) Both of these together got Sweet Pea counting quite often, too!

Science – To reinforce the letter A, I printed out large ants with a capital and lower case A on each half, then cut them in half and Cutie Pie and Sweet Pea took turns matching them. This led to an investigation! We checked out the ants in our driveway, in books and on video and learned about their body parts and some facts about them. I never knew they were so strong!

We were going to ‘decorate’ our letter A’s, however, Cutie Pie said A is for Alphabet and was wanting to put the alphabet letters all over his letter A, but he didn’t want to write them all and so we didn’t get very far…
I’m going to try to link up to these… The Attached Mama's Alphabet Craft CollectionTot School

Mama’s week in review – letter Z

Zebra. Zig Zag. Zip. Zero. Zoo. Zoom.

We didn’t talk a lot about words starting with Z this week, the boys were preoccupied with other things, but that’s OK. However, we did do a lot of playing with Z things!

Bible Story –  We followed Hubbard’s Cupboard’s suggestion and talked about Psalm 51 this week. Since it wasn’t really a story I thought the kiddos wouldn’t like it. I was partly right, as Sweet Pea always got down to play after the first few verses each day. Cutie Pie, however, listened intently. I tried my best to explain to him what some of the words meant and tried to break it down into sections and explained the meaning as best I could. The last day we read it all the way through and talked about how we can become white as snow by believing Jesus died for us and asking forgiveness for our sins. I explained that this involved talking to God, and that’s what we are doing when we pray and that we can talk to God whenever we’d like. He started talking to God right then and asked him to forgive him for something that he did. Then he kept very still with his head cocked to one side. I asked what he was doing and he said he couldn’t hear God talking to him! He was so sincere in the asking and in his response to me, it was hard not to giggle! 

We did a little artsy thing to illustrate being white as snow. I drew a Zero in white crayon when Cutie Pie wasn’t looking. Then I asked him to paint in black on the paper and explained that could be like our sin. Following that I asked what color blood is and had him paint in red over the black and said that Jesus’ dying on the cross saved us from our sin. He could then see the white Zero showing through the paint and I told him when we go to heaven and God asks if we have sin Jesus will answer for us and say we have Zero sin, making us white as snow. (idea from Hubbard’s Cupboard)

Language Arts – Cutie Pie again started coming up with words beginning with Z all on his own at random times throughout the week. He always caught me off guard, too! Usually when we come up with a letter of the week word we write it on the white board side of our easel and we did this with our Z words, too. Mostly the boys liked the words Zoo and Zoom this week, so we did a lot of Zooming of cars and we took a field trip to the Zoo. I was also impressed one day when I was just doodling, making Zig Zags on black paper with colored chalk at the table while the boys were finishing breakfast (hoping they would be into creating something for Nana for Mother’s Day) and Cutie Pie started drawing Zig Zags with me! I love it when he takes the initiative to try to write and draw! He’s getting really good at the letter P!

Art and Science- Cutie Pie loves car painting so we got out his monster trucks and as he was Zooming them around this week he realized the wheels have a Zig Zag pattern on them. So, I got the paint out, placed gobs of it in a pan, laid down a large sheet of paper and let the boys roll the monster trucks around in the paint and on the paper making Zig Zags! This sort of activity never gets old for them! It was also a great opportunity to get out the incline and ‘do’ some science! Sweet Pea then combined all the colors of paint on the tray and made neat patterns with the tires and his fingernails. (science again!)

This week we took a field trip to the Zoo. First, it was letter Z week. Second, it was finally sunny and relatively warm! We were all very excited to go see the animals, be outside, and have some fun! Unfortunately, we must have gone at an off time because most of the animals were in their dens while their cages were being cleaned or were sleeping. The boys had fun, though. 

As we walked through the Zoo we talked about the different animals we saw – how big they were compared to the previous animal we saw, their colors, what they eat, how many feet they walk on if they walk, etc. Even though Seneca Park Zoo is a fairly small Zoo, it almost always takes us a good 2 1/2 hours to go through it because my boys love to stop and watch the animals! Then there’s the Zot Zone where they can pretend to be a veterinarian taking care of animals, where they learn by doing. They love this place!

Play – (a carry-over from last week) – When we went to The Strong National Museum of Play last week we played with Zoobs. That’s the day we talked about the letter Z being our next letter of the week, so Zoobs deserve honorable mention here! (We did a lot of outdoor play this week, so we didn’t make it back there to play with them again…)

And of course we did a lot of zipper practicing!

Now that we’re done with learning the letters of the alphabet Cutie Pie wants to learn to count higher, so we’re moving on to numbers while we keep reviewing our letters. I think I will concentrate more on lower case letters and the letters in the boys’ names this time around! I’ll continue posting on those to complete our alphabet pages. Any and all ideas are welcome!

I’m going to try to link up to these this week:

The Attached Mama's Alphabet Craft CollectionTot School

Mama’s week in review – letter X

X 

I had high hopes this would be a good week since Hubby was home to help with letter X. However, the letter X is challenging plus both boys had colds (yet again) so it didn’t go as smoothly as I’d have liked.

X-ray. Xylophone. eXtinct. eXit. Excavation. Experiment.

We didn’t cover a whole lot of words, and actually only really spent time on eXperiment, eXtinct and excavation. 

Bible Story – According to Hubbard’s Cupboard this past week we were to have covered Judas betraying Jesus. My boys listened to the first group of verses, and asked each morning for the Bible story when I would read on, but as we started reading each day they lost interest quickly. Hubby and I did our best to tell them the Easter Story including Judas’ betrayal, but it didn’t seem like much sank in. However, in a future post I will share an interesting question Cutie Pie posed to me Easter night. (listening skills, attention span, comprehension)

Language Arts – Hubby and I both tried using many words that included the letter of the week, like we do most weeks, but somewhere along the way we both lost interest. However, we did pay a visit to the train store and pointed out the sign for a train crossing is an X. We also mentioned that a room you aren’t supposed to enter sometimes has an X marked on the door, but when you need to leave you look for the eXit sign. We tried hard, but had a lot going on this week and let it get away from us. (vocabulary)

Science – A few months ago a friend passed along a recipe for making dinosaur eggs to eXcavate. I don’t remember where she found it and haven’t been able to find it since. The scribbles I wrote down were as follows:

1/2 c sand
1 1/4 c flour
1 1/4 c dirt
water

Mix dry ingredients and add water until you can form an egg without it falling apart. Form an egg shape around a plastic dinosaur and let dry for several days. Excavate carefully!

This didn’t work for us. I’m sure it was because I had two little guys helping me add the water. Ours was very muddy, even after adding more dirt, so we just pushed our dinosaurs down into a glop! After about 5 days the boys eXcavated them and still had a lot of fun discovering the color of the dinosaurs in their eggs! (processes, cause and effect, sense of touch)

Another science activity we did was about one way dinosaurs became eXtinct and was spurred on by a different friend’s e-mail about a science kit she bought at the grocery. We combined cornstarch and water in a bowl and played with our dinosaurs in it. It was something we played with before, but not in this way. As the dinosaurs were left sitting on the mixture, as dinosaurs might have sat on mud by a pond while having a drink, their feet sank and formed a suction when we tried to pick them up!

Cutie Pie loved doing this experiment getting very excited that it was a little hard to pull the dinosaurs out and related it quickly to when he was out in the mud and his boot was pulled off his foot as he tried to take a step. Then he realized it would have been hard for dinosaurs to walk in this sort of gook and that they would have been stuck! He labeled this an eXperiment all by himself!

We were also very busy this week running errands, fiXing things with both real and toy tools, visiting family, and celebrating Good Friday and Easter! The letter X might be a letter we review again down the road.

Wanted to try: Scavenger hunt using X marks the spot. Pirate hats with the traditional X symbol on them. Make bones out of crumpled up paper and white glue/water mixture and play with them – look like X-rays. 

I’m going to try to link up to these places today…
The Attached Mama's Alphabet Craft CollectionTot School

Mama’s week in review – letter V

Vine. Vehicles. Violin. Vase. Vegetables. Velcro. Vent. Violet. Vanilla. Veterinarian. Vacuum. Voice. Vibration. Vulture. Vertical. Volleyball. Vision.

Bible Story – This week we talked about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. To be honest, I didn’t get into the details of the story as far as explaining the parallels to our spiritual lives. Cutie Pie got separated from us for a short time at an area play place and ever since then he’s been very attached – I’m mean, major separation anxiety…at times crying when I’m upstairs for just a minute and he’s downstairs. It seemed just touching on the idea of the son being lost and then found was a good enough lesson for him that we didn’t go much farther than that. We ended up talking a lot about safety when we go places and who it’s safe to talk to and we reviewed what my name is, what I look like, and things to remember when someone is helping find his mom. (emotional development, safety awareness, trust)

Language – We had the capital and lower case V’s up on the wall again this past week. Cutie Pie seemed to have a hard time remembering it was a V, not a U. It makes me wonder if he’ll have a hard time remembering W, or if he’ll think it’s supposed to be with two curved bottoms instead of points! We talked a lot about the beginning sounds of words, concentrating mostly on V, but also playing lots of guessing games. Cutie Pie was also on a rhyming ‘rant’ this past week rhyming almost every word I said some days! (Which, by the way was both extremely annoying and extremely cute at times!)

Science – The weather was strange this past week – very cold a few days, gloomy/rainy a few days, relatively nice a few days – so we had a lot of time outside exploring. We got out the boys’ magnifying glasses and checked out the worms we found, watched them wriggle around in our hands, in the gravel pit and on the driveway before letting them crawl back into the earth for protection. Cutie Pie also spent a little bit at Bubble-ology! I’ll post about that later this week – very fun! (gross motor, fine motor, science)

Experiment – I was looking for a velocity experiment for the boys beyond the basic of dropping two objects and seeing which lands first and discovering why. I found a Comet Cratering experiment on Try Science and modified it a bit for my little guys. This is what we did:

materials: flour, tin pan several inches deep, several objects that are OK getting flour-covered, something to cover your floor (ex. shower curtain, large table cloth), paper and pencil for chart (if desired)

  • First, I poured flour into a tin, until it was about 2 inches deep.
  • Then I placed the tin onto a blanket in our kitchen as this experiment creates a little mess (this would have been great to do outside, but I chose to do this on a less-than-perfect day)
  • Next, one by one we took the chosen objects (several balls of similar size but different weight, a square magnet, a larger heavier ball) and dropped them twice into the flour, first from the kiddos shoulder height while kneeling, then from shoulder height standing up.
  • After each object was dropped we examined what the crater looked like – how deep it was, how wide it was – and talked about how much flour was moved when it dropped.
  • We followed that by dropping two different objects from the same height, trying to get them to land in different spots and we compared the craters to each other.
  • The boys also noticed the textures from our objects left imprinted in the craters, which was something I hadn’t thought of!

(The experiment on Try Science was much more complicated for preschoolers, although sounded pretty cool, still! If your kiddos are a little older you should check it out!)

We ended our week taking a trip to the zoo to see the Vultures! We didn’t end up decorating our letter Vs, however, we did talk about pasting dump truck cut-outs onto them, because, as Cutie Pie puts it, “they’re Vehicles!” We also didn’t get to the vibrations experiment or the volume experiment, but that’s OK, it will give us something to do on one of these rainy days!

Mama’s Last Week in Review – Letter P

Pizza, Pancakes, homemade Pretzels, Prehistoric animals, Pulled Pork, Pasta, Pepper, Please, Papa, Plants, Pom-Pom, Play (lots of it!) – This pretty much sums up the week around here! Not enough? Then include the Bible story about the wise and foolish builders and we’ve got you covered!


It was an extra fun week since Hubby was home on winter break and spent lots of time playing and going places with us! In addition to traveling to see my dad the first weekend of break, we managed to go to RMSC and see the Prehistoric animals (dinosaurs) and play in all the areas of the museum. This, of course, included playing in the sand and water box trying to make houses to withstand the onslaught of water when built on sand (construction of a house like the foolish builders). We also tried to build houses on pillows to see if they would stand up to just a little nudge. Hubby and the boys spent time building some towers and talked about how something needs a firm foundation to stand tall (wise builders). Of course, we did touch on the spiritual life application of this story a bit, too. (Bible Story, math, science)

Language Arts – In addition to Sweet Pea getting really into pasting Purple and Pink Pom-Poms on our large letter P, Cutie Pie has started to sound out simple words and through a lot of fun making up silly words with his Daddy, he’s starting to rhyme words when given a letter to start the rhyming word with. (Think “what rhymes with duck that starts with a P?”) I know this sounds simple to us, but it isn’t always that easy for kiddos!

Math/Science – Cutie Pie really got into the “What is” game with me, at least that’s what we’re calling it! It’s pretty simple. Take two objects and compare them, asking your child for the answer. For example, “what is bigger Daddy’s foot or Mommy’s car?” I tried this with things that are still abstract to him, like comparing a whale to a sky scraper. He absolutely loved this game!

 

We also made homemade pretzels. The boys didn’t get into it as much as we thought, but they were delicious!

Play – As I mentioned earlier we visited my dad for an overnight. My kiddos love their grampa! They had a lot of fun playing with him. They also got to see my mom, whom they always have a fun time with! At her house they seemed to like Pushing around her stools, but she also has some Megablocks and they built some tall towers there! And P week wouldn’t be complete without getting to Play with Papa!

Now, to think of fun things to do with the letter Q…..

Mama’s Last Week in Review – Letter I

Sorry I didn’t post this on Monday as I had intended. It was a rough week and busy weekend and left my mind numb!

Last week we concentrated on the letter I and the David and Goliath Bible story. This was a fun letter, because it is the first letter in our last name. However, with all the other things going on during the week we didn’t do as much as I’d hoped.

Science – We talked a lot about above and below, tall and short, in and out, near and far, in relation to David and Goliath and used these words a lot in our play this week. Above and below were related to often, as both armies were camped out on hills with a valley between. For in and out we talked about how David was a shepherd and probably shepherds often carried things like rocks and sticks in their bags to ward off animal attackers. (spatial relationships) 


We tried an invisible ink experiment, using q-tips and drawing with them after dipping them in lemon juice (fine motor), then holding them up to a heat source. The lemon juice is supposed to turn brown as it is heated, but for some reason this didn’t work for us. Cutie Pie didn’t seem very interested in this experiment, though, probably because it took time for the lemon juice to dry, so his attention waned.


We also borrowed a ‘science kit’ about insects for K through 2nd graders from our library. Cutie Pie had a great time reading about them with us, examining the wasp and beetle that came encased in glass, and watching a Reading Rainbow video about various insects. I hadn’t really looked through the bags of kits our library has until now and have already made plans to use some of the others I saw! It took a lot of prep work out of my little insect plans and Cutie Pie loved the books that were included in the kit! (science and language arts)

Art – I had wanted to make inch-worms with the boys using foam strips 1″ or so wide, folding it accordion style, poking a hole through all surfaces near one fold and threading a pipe cleaner through it, knotting one end and folding the other end into a V for antennae. (I gleaned this idea from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.) However, the boys were not into crafts last week at all! (this would have been coordination, fine motor, colors)

Play – The boys loved playing with inclines so much last week that they kept playing with them this week! Cutie Pie spent a little of his birthday money on a monster truck hill track and has been having fun with his new dedicated ‘monster truck incline’!

As you can tell, we’re still doing a lot of experiments. Check out yesterday’s post and offer a comment and you may get your own science experiment e-book as a resource to use with your little one!

Mama’s Last Week in Review – Letter H

This past week we concentrated on the letter H as well as Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. It was a pretty fun week to say the least! We are still having computer issues with our main computer (which houses our photos) but I will try to add photos of this when it’s working again, because I think I got some cute pics this week!
We started out just reading the Bible story, then we also read Humpty Dumpty, as suggested in the Hubbard’s Cupboard 3’s curriculum. Cutie Pie remembered we had seen Veggie Tales Josh and the Big Wall, so it was pretty easy for him to understand the Bible story, so we talked mostly about the nursery rhyme and words that start with H: Hats, Hot cocoa, Heart, Hand, Heat, Hot, Hamburger, Hadrosaur, High, Horses, Help…and we did several experiments!
Throughout the week we built walls out of cardboard bricks and wood blocks and marched around them before blowing homemade Horns and knocking them down, and we let Hard boiled eggs fall from a (cardboard) brick wall that we built and talked about why they broke, followed by rolling a few down an incline. Cutie Pie’s hypothesis was that the egg would break, however, the experiment revealed the eggs stayed intact when they rolled! (science, gross motor) This lead to a discussion about what would have happened to Humpty Dumpty if he had a slide next to him to help him get down from the wall. We made our Handprints and looked at them closely with a magnifying glass (science), baked Heart cookies and talked about how Heat changes things (more science, senses, math) as well as enjoying our daily Hot cocoa dates! I also found this neat little pattern for paper Helicopters, which we made, followed by watching a few kid-friendly videos of helicopters, since the boys were really interested in how the paper helicopter ‘flew’. (science, fine motor)
We ended the week with two hot/cold science experiments, which I found in the book 365 More Simple Science Experiments with everyday materials, published by Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. The first, called The Warm and Cold of It, uses Hot and cold water in 2 separate cups and two balloons filled with cold water, only big enough to hold water but still fit into the cups. “The balloon filled with cold water sinks to the bottom of the warm water, but floats to the top of the cold water!” It shows that cold water is heavier than warm water.
The second hot/cold water experiment was called Color Me Warm, in which you have 2 glasses, one each of hot and cold water. You add the same amount of food coloring to both glasses. The food coloring in the hot water swirls and colors the water fairly quickly as opposed to that in the cold water. The hot water is in motion. As the water cools at the surface, it sinks to the bottom of the cup allowing more hot water to rise, which causes the food coloring to swirl! With each experiment the boys ‘tested’ the water to see which cup held which temperature and Cutie Pie came up with a hypothesis before we tested his theory (science, sense of touch). He loved this!
Cutie Pie was pretty entertained by the inclined plane, so we found ourselves experimenting with that off and on all week assisted by some experiments in this neat science e-book I am planning on reviewing on this blog next week! Cutie Pie told me the other day that he likes doing experiments with me and wishes he could do them every day. Since his interest is so strong I think I’m going to try hard to do this with him!
We didn’t concentrate much on the actual letter H, trying to write it or color it or anything since Cutie Pie announced to me several days ago now that he doesn’t want to learn his letters anymore. I figured I’d take it easy in that regard and follow his lead rather than push it and have him rebel, however, he has been picking up his Leap Frog Scribble and Write more often and asking for help with it less often, and he’s expressed several times that he wants to read! I think it’s just a matter of time.